2K
Transfer on a Spirit

If
one, let's say, shot 4-perf Super-35 but only wanted to transfer a
2.35 : 1 area of the frame -- to be converted to an anamorphic image for
output to 35mm scope -- can one allot the full 2048 x 1556 pixels (?)
to just the 2.35 picture information, as opposed to have to scan the whole
Super-35 frame at 2048 x 1556 but only end up using approx. 2048 x 870
pixels to achieve 2.35, or only scanning 2048 x 870?

I'm
really asking about films like "O Brother Where Art Thou" and
"Lord of the Rings" that were shot in Super-35 but output to
2.35 anamorphic. It seems to achieve maximum resolution allowable in a
Spirit datacine transfer, you would only transfer the 2.35 area of the
Super-35 frame and fill the full 2048 x 1556 pixel array with the 2.35
image (I'm really sorry if these numbers are wrong -- I'm just
sort of guessing here.)

But
someone just told me that a Spirit can't resize a frame in order to
use all of its pixel array, so even though a 2.35 area on a Super-35 frame
would receive the full horizontal resolution, 2048 pixels, it would only
use up about 870 pixels vertically as opposed to squeeze 2.35 across 2048
x 1556 or whatever.

If
that's true, then the resolution difference between a Spirit 2K transfer
of a 2.35 area of the Super-35 frame at 2048 x 870, as opposed to a transfer
to 24P HD-D5 (1920 x 1080) and then cropping down to 2.35 (approx. 1920
x 800) wouldn't be that much.

So
exactly how was the 2.35 area of the Super-35 frame handled in the case
of the digital intermediate process used for "O Brother Where Art
Thou", "Amelie", "Lord of the Rings", and "The
One" -- all recorded out to 2.35 anamorphic?

It
seems to me that if the Spirit can't use all of its potential pixels
for the 2.35 area of Super-35, one would still be better off shooting
with anamorphic lenses and thus being able to scan more film negative
vertically in the Spirit.

David
Mullen

David
Mullen wrote:

It
seems to me that if the Spirit can't use all of its potential
pixels for the 2.35 area of >Super-35, one would still
be better off shooting with anamorphic lenses and thus >being
able to scan more film negative vertically in the Spirit.

Yep,
I think that makes sense unless you have good reason to shoot S35. And
there are good reasons -- ease of a common-topline TV version, smaller
and faster and shorter lenses, etc.

I
did like the film Go, seen only on video, which was shot S35 (I assume)
with an Aaton 35. No camera noise problems that I noticed . Pretty funny
film, and I liked the way it was made.

Jeff
"933 channels and still nothing on" Kreines

David
Mullen wrote :

But
someone just told me that a Spirit can't resize a frame
in order to use all of its >pixel array, so even though
a 2.35 area on a Super-35 frame would receive the full >horizontal
resolution, 2048 pixels, it would only use up about 870 pixels
vertically as >opposed to squeeze 2.35 across 2048 x 1556
or whatever.

First,
the Spirit doesn't have a "pixel array" -- it's a line
array telecine -- meaning that it scans the film line by line as opposed
to frame by frame (which of course you know).

Since
you are maintaining the aspect ratio of the image as photographed (i.e.
it's not anamorphic) you will of course want to use the full width
of the CCDs -- meaning, as you suspect, that the vertical information
in extracting a 2:35 image from S35 will of course be less than that of
a 1.85 or 1.33 capture, due to frame geometry, pure and simple.

I
can imagine that there are ways to modify the Spirit (factory job) so
that the "gearing" (metaphorically) between the sprocket and
scanning is changed, and vertical res is increased.

A
different option would be to do 4K scans, which I believe a Millenium
can do.

I
did see some occasional aliasing in "O Brother" as well as some
limitations in terms of color (obviously, it was heavily manipulated in
timing, but some of the color looked -- not unpleasantly -- a bit like
a hand-painted postcard). But these were pretty subtle things.

Jeff
"wants to do 2K timing at home in his spare time" Kreines

someone
just told me that a Spirit can't resize a frame in order
to use all of its pixel >array

I
was in a telecine suite today and asked this question and was told that
the very first machines had a limited ability to resize but most models
out there have no problems with any format.

someone
just told me that a Spirit can't resize a frame in order
to use all of its pixel >array

CRT
based telecines such as C-Reality are very flexible for various aspect
ratios filling the data files. That was the design philosophy, to do the
ratio/size change optically before sampling, just like in camera. Also
the front end is full RGB bandwidth and I believe 4K DATA output is now
available on the street.

When
choosing a telecine for a project there are many factors to consider,
this is just one. All the telecines on the market have their strengths
and weaknesses.

Sorry
to keep pestering people on how the Spirit works...

But
if the film is in a fixed position to the line array scanning the frame,
so that 2048 pixels is the maximum horizontal resolution for Super-35
/ Full Aperture and 1828 pixels for Academy -- does that mean that the
2.35 : 1 picture information off of a Super-35 negative will ultimately
be limited to 2048 x 870 (approx.) resolution?

And
how does the Spirit scan a Super-16 frame then -- does it only end up
being scanned at 1024 x 620 pixels?

David
Mullen

Cinematographer
/ L.A.

The
CCD array in the Spirit is fixed at 1920x1080 (not 2048x1556 which is
true 2k). So if your going to go 2:35:1 your numbers of 2048x870 sound
about right. The line array CCD can't change it's shape to fit
the aspect ratio. Facilities that need 2048x1556 from the Spirit do a
up rez with interpolation software. All blow ups by the way are done in
the

frame
store. This sound a bit undesirable but in reality the Spirit does a excellent
blow up.

An
advantage of the CRT telecine is that it can change it's sample size
at will.

Jim
Mann

Freelance
Colorist

David Mullen
wrote:

And
how does the Spirit scan a Super-16 frame then -- does it
only end up being >scanned at 1024 x 620 pixels?

The
Spirit has different gates for S16 and S35, with different lenses -- so
S16 also uses the full width of the CCDs.

does
that mean that the 2.35 : 1 picture information off of a Super-35
negative will >ultimately be limited to 2048 x 870 (approx.)
resolution?

Unless
there's some clever oversampling tricks we don't know about, I'd
guess that's the case. The question is, can a Millenium or C-Reality,
using tube tricks of some sort, get a higher-res scan of this material,
since they're not limited to fixed CCD pixels.

Jeff
"better than broken pixels" Kreines

The
CCD array in the Spirit is fixed at 1920x1080 (not 2048x1556
which is true 2k).

So
other than color information and compression issues, is there any real
resolution difference between a 24P HD transfer on a Spirit to HD-D5 Ð
and a 1.78 : 1 "2K" transfer on a Spirit? I'd always assumed
that a 2K transfer on a Spirit had more resolution than an HDTV transfer.

So
how exactly does it handle Super-16 in terms of not being limited to a
small area of the line array? An optical system?

David
Mullen

Cinematographer
/ L.A.

David
Mullen wrote :

So
how exactly does it handle Super-16 in terms of not being
limited to a small area >of the line array? An optical
system?

A
different lens/gate combo, which spreads the S16 image over the entire
width of the CCD.

Yea,
roughly the same CCD area is used for both 35mm and 16mm by optically
filling the line array with a lens change, much like an optical printer
would. You need to look out for field sharpness on that s16 gate however.

In
terms of hardware up-res from 1920 to 2048, even and "excellent"
blow-up is often undesirable for film work. You gotta think that to achieve
even a near-real-time uprez via hardware, there must be some cheating
going on by using a lower quality image filter (sinc, anyone know?). Did
some tests on a high-profile feature looking at laser output from a Spirit
and saw significant aliasing in near-horizontal lines in the frame - stairs,
wall dressings, etc. Now not all Spirits are tuned the same, so not all
necessarily have this "problem". And perhaps it's not a
Spirit issue but rather a 2k issue .

>The
question is, can a Millenium or C-Reality ... get a higher-res scan of
this material

In
theory, but resolution is not just a number. Spot size comes into play
with CRTs. You can produce a 6k CRT, but if the spot is blooming and yielding
a 3.5k equivalent (for example), then...?

Doug
Delaney

Imaging

Pacific
Title

Yea,
roughly the same CCD area is used for both 35mm and 16mm by
optically >filling the line array with a lens change.......

How
does say 2 perf or even 3 perf fit into this ? For a 1.85 extraction to
16x9 would you lose anything ? I am imagining the loss if any would be
marginal ? Also would this issue make any difference if your output is
in 2k data or the HD format ?

Tom
Gleeson D.O.P.

I
would think the "problem" would be more of a 2k issue than a
Spirit issue. But there's no question, if I had to blowup a scene
that had potential aliasing problems, and I needed to play with it in
the Inferno, I would scan on a C-Reality or ITK at 4K , output to inferno
and Arri laser it back to film.

Jim
Mann

Freelance
Colorist

>>other
than color information and compression issues<<<

Oh
thanks David

I
really enjoy a good laugh in the morning!

It's
a What's the difference between Rembrandt and a house painter, other
than talent, type question :-)

I've
felt for a long time that we're too tied up in resolution, the main
concerns should be, apart from bandwidth recordable on the original material,
exactly colour depth and compression. Oh and you could add motion artefacts
to that as well.

I've
felt for a long time that we're too tied up in resolution,
the main concerns should >be, apart from bandwidth recordable
on the original material, exactly colour depth >and compression.

I
sort of agree in principle, but as someone who generally shoots for print
projection, not telecine transfer, resolution can't be ignored either.
In some shots in a movie, resolution or color space or compression might
vie with each other as the most prominent feature. In some shots, for
example, compression is less obvious than lower resolution.

I
like the idea of the digital intermediate system -- it's just ending
up with an 2.35 scope image from a Super-35 negative that ends up being
only 2048 x 870 pixels... Since I shot "Jackpot" in 24P HD and
cropped it to scope -- basically 1920 x 800 -- I was hoping to follow
that up with something more significantly better in resolution, not just
slightly better.

Anyway,
eventually we'll have those 4K C-Realities, Millenium-TK's, and
new 4K Spirits up and running, right? I'd hate for the digital intermediate
technology to become stuck at 2K.

The
other advantage I see to the Spirit is that the method of scanning, the
light source, tends to minimize grain and dirt & dust problems, which
seems why these digital intermediate Super-35 films out in theaters this
Christmas ("Amelie", "Lord of the Rings") seem less
grainy than the other Super-35 blow-ups made using the same Kodak stocks.
Some people have been complaining about the softness of "Lord of
the Rings" but it didn't seem too bad to me.

Just
saw "Black Hawk Down", which looked like a conventional optical
printer blow-up from Super-35 to anamorphic - really crisp but gritty,
which probably suited that film better than something softer but less
grainy. Great photography & directing, I thought.

Actually,
the main reason why I've been questioning the pixel resolution of
the Spirit transfer isn't so much because I'm weighing D.I. versus
Optical Printer -- but doing a D.I. with a Super-35 negative versus an
anamorphic negative. I can't get the look I want without the D.I.
anyway, so what I'm debating in my mind is the camera format, not
the post approach. At first I thought that the extra size of the anamorphic
negative would sort of be offset by the "equalizing" factor
of a 2K limit to the resolution, but now it seems that even with a Spirit
transfer, there is more pixel information devoted to an anamorphic frame
versus the 2.35 area of a Super-35 frame.

David
Mullen

Cinematographer
/ L.A.

David
Mullen wrote:

but
now it seems that even with a Spirit transfer, there is more
pixel information >devoted to an anamorphic frame versus
the 2.35 area of a Super-35 frame.

Lots
more.

Since
I shot "Jackpot" in 24P HD and cropped it to scope
-- basically 1920 x 800 -- I >was hoping to follow that
up with something more significantly better in resolution,
>not just slightly better.

I'm
not sure it's fair to look at this as a resolution-only thing. The
Spirit transfer from film is going to have better color depth and a little
nice random grain that HDCam lacks -- but, hmm... I wonder if the Anamorphic
S16 that JP (the lurker) mentioned wouldn't have a similar number
of pixels devoted to a frame as S35 2.35 extraction?

Jeff
"pixels, schmixels" Kreines

Oh
no question David, you'll still get much more data if you go anamorphic
as an origination format.

I
need help here but I believe that at the distances people normally sit
away from a screen that the differences between a 2K and optical finish,
in 1:1.85, are undetectable.

At
a recent conference on of the panel said that there were only 6 people
in the auditorium that would be able to tell the difference.

Most
of the audience thought he was referring to eyesight, in fact he was referring
to the fact that the panel, 6 people, were the only ones close enough
to tell!

Geoff
Boyle FBKS

>Director of Photography

>EU based

It
always amazes me that even at this late date, how a Spirit class scanner
gets info off of film seems to be so poorly understood. The machine has
one "detail" channel with 1920 pixels, and three color sensors
for RGB at about 1000 pixels, and makes SD, HD or "data" out
of this. Any repositions, zooms, ect, are done by math. You can imagine
for yourselves the limitations for doing film work this implies, and where
the impetus for spirit II comes from

I
have been involved in a number of evals of 2k vs all film, and there are
a number of factors that seem to interplay as to what the outcome seems.
One is if it really is 2k. One is the bit depth. One is the nature of
the material and how well it's photographed (note:this holds for 24p
capture as well) . One is the sophistication of the audience doing the
judging. As always, the quality of the display systems is a factor.

If
we were to take the consumer sensibilities as our guide, TI projectors
at 1280x and an HD production pipeline would be fine.

I
have yet to see a critical audience see images that have gone
through a digital process and back out as completely "transparent",
although most of us would agree that the process is very good
when done well.

Lou

Jeff
wrote:

A
different lens/gate combo, which spreads the S16 image over
the entire width of >the CCD.

If
I may piggyback my own question onto this thread.

It
would seem the Spirit is doing an optical "blowup" here, so
to speak. So it would be scanning at the same res as in 35mm but scanning
an optically magnified image.

Does
a C-Reality or a Millennium then, in 2K or 4K mode scan with the same
resolution i.e. in "scans/mm" (what is the term I should be
using here ?) with 16 and S16 as it (C-Reality or Millennium) does with
35mm ?

Is
choosing 4K instead of 2K perhaps even more important if the
camera negative is a 16mm format ?

P.S.
Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd chose information (sharpness,
grey scale, colorspace) over "hiding grain" in a 16/S16 DI any
day: grain I can deal with on the front end (choice of stock, light &
frame a certain way etc) or even live with it - (what it is) but a plastic
looking image: I don't think so...

-Sam
Wells

film/nj/usa

How
does say 2 perf or even 3 perf fit into this ?

Roughly
the same as it would for a s35 finish. The unused image area
north and south of image is not printed when duping s35 for
anamorphic release. So, in a way, you're only really getting,
say, 2048x872 (2.35AR) of resolution when dealing with this
digitally. I think there may be a way of slowing the film
thru a Spirit gate to get a non-square pixel and thus increasing
vertical resolution, ie. 2048x1556 from a 2.35 neg, or a 3-perf
neg, or whatever. Anyone confirm?

>I
would scan on a C-Reality or ITK at 4K , output to inferno
and Arri laser

>it
back to film.

Funny
how the term "scan" is more and more loosely used. I guess I
think of a "scan" as an uncompressed, full-bandwidth digital
capture of an image at 12-bit minimum as opposed to a sub sampled (with
respect to chroma as Lou pointed out) capture. I must admit I'm not
as familiar with the ITK or C-Reality as I should be, so please correct
me if I'm wrong in suggesting that these machines are not capable
of this yet.

The
first thing I look for when screening a film gone thru DI is color quality
rather than resolution or apparent sharpness. For the average scene, 2k
is sufficient as has been the case in the VFX world for a number of years.
Even if top-on-the-line imaging tools are used, 4k film scan, 16-bit color-correction
(or better), laser output via ARRI or Kodak, there's plenty of room
for slop. Hand a young DP an Arricam and a set of S4 primes and see what
you get compared to, say, Mr. Storaro. It ain't the tools at a certain
point in the curve.

Doug
"not sure if Storaro likes Cooke" Delaney

Motion
Picture Imaging

Pacific
Title

>P.S.
Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd chose information
(sharpness, grey scale, >colorspace) over "hiding
grain" in a 16/S16 DI any day: grain I can deal with
on the >front end

Mainly
by shooting on slower-speed film stocks, which may not always be practical.
I think it comes down (as always) to WHAT DO YOU WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE?

Optical
printing Super-16 to 35mm through dupes has a look; converting Super-16
to 35mm using a digital intermediate has a look -- which approach you
choose should depend on which gives your project the look it needs. You
might have to do color-correction tricks only possible digitally. You
might want as little grain as possible.

In
the case of Super-35 and digital intermediates with an output to 2.35
scope, my concern is the resolution loss from cropping that scan to 2.35.
But in the case of using a Spirit transfer to "blow-up" Super-16
to 35mm, I see more pluses than minuses compared to optical printer blow-ups,
which have all sorts of problems connected with them.

I
did one Super-16 feature, for example, and we had to do all of our optical
work and titles in 35mm and intercut them with our 35mm blow-up, because
doing dupes in Super-16 and THEN blowing up the image through duping was
just too big of a quality loss. And while we blew-up directly from Super-16
neg to a 35mm I.P. to get a little extra quality, we now had dirt &
dust blown-up and permanently photographed into our 35mm I.P., making
our final transfer to home video rather tricky to keep acceptably clean
(a lot of dirt fixes later). So handling all of that post work digitally
makes more sense to me.

And
it seems to me that the 2K resolution limit of the Spirit is more than
enough for a Super-16 negative; so compared to an optical printer blow-up
through dupes, I actually expect to see better sharpness, not less, PLUS
less graininess. And all the control over the image that digital color-correction
allows. I actually think that in the case of Super-16, a D.I. finally
allows you to hold onto some of the quality of the original negative rather
than suffer all that loss from the duping & optical blow-up.

And
dupes and optical printing ALSO have an effect on color, so it's not
like there's a clear case for superior color rendition by sticking
to film throughout, as opposed to a digital intermediate.

The
key seems to be to weigh all the strengths and weaknesses for each particular
project between format, film stock, post approaches, etc., and chose the
one that gets you the look you need (assuming you can afford it). Like
I said, there are situationswhere digital color-correction is the only
way to get the effect you want.

David
Mullen

Cinematographer / L.A.

David
wrote:

>Anyway,
eventually we'll have those 4K C-Realities, Millenium-TK's,
and new 4K >Spirits up and running, right? I'd hate
for the digital intermediate technology to >become stuck
at 2K.

Hi
David,

I
don't think we're in any danger of being stuck. CRT telecines
can scan 4k and are wondering (dreaming) about 6k. The Spirit 2 will soon
be rolling. Of course the bottle neck is moving all these zeros and ones
around. HSDL has us moving 2K data off the ITK at 16 fps.(the current
speed champ.) The telecines will do real time, we just need bigger pipes,
and in time they will come. If we want to do entire features in 2k or
4k we're talking terabytes for storage and those prices are getting
better.

I
don't thing film is stuck either, as Fuji is about to unwrap 4 dye
layer stock. Have faith things are changing and will continue to do so.

Jim
Mann

Freelance
Colorist

>It
seems to me that if the Spirit can't use all of its potential
pixels for the 2.35 area of >Super-35, one would still
be better off shooting with anamorphic lenses and thus >being
able to scan more film negative vertically in the Spirit.

Yes,
that is the better choice.

The
Spirit grabs the entire full aperture 35mm image in a internal frame store.
This is 25mm x 18.8 mm and is stored in 1920 x 1600 pixel (internal format,
non square pixel). This image then can be resized in the internal spatial
converter to whatever output format. If you only want to use the 2.35
area your output image is derived from 1920 x 900 scanned pixel.

If
that's true, then the resolution difference between a
Spirit 2K transfer of a 2.35 area of the Super-35 frame at
2048 x 870, as opposed to a transfer to 24P HD-D5 (1920 x
1080) and then cropping down to 2.35 (approx. 1920 x 800)
wouldn't be that much.

Pixelwise
you are right, but HD-D5 is 4:2:2 only and has a 1:5 compression. Data
is 10 bit RGB with no compression. Thats the better choice for a digital
intermediate.

Regards

Uwe
Braehler

Thomson
Multimedia

>And
it seems to me that the 2K resolution limit of the Spirit
is more than enough for >a Super-16 negative;

OK
here is where I might have a problem with the conventional wisdom of "2K,
it'sgood enough for Super-16" Is it "more than enough"
for a 35mm negative ?, If not, how could it be more than enough for a
Super-16 negative ? I don't get it...

Here
is my point: Does a given 2K scan capture ALL the useable information
in (for the sake of argument) a 35mm Academy negative (let's say for
comparison 1.85:1 area of it)? If you were to say it does not, then might
I say that using the same scanning resolution on an S16 negative does
not capture all the information either? - i.e. there is information that
is missed.

Now,
which will suffer more from missed information, the 35mm negative which
isusing about three times as many grains to represent the same image (and
you could say has ~ 2.5 X the 'total' information) OR, the S16
negative which will need all the help it can get if it is to be ultimately
magnified 2.5 X it's size? (or in the case of the Spirit DataCine,
has been magnified that much before scanning?)

Look
at the 35mm negative, and mentally draw a rectangle 12.35 x 7.5mmm within
it. (This is the area of a S16 negative). Now, within that 12.35 x 7.5mm
rectangle of the 35mm negative, can a given scan capture all the useful
information in that rectangle? If not, then a scan of a 35mm negative
at the same scanning resolution is not capturing all the useful information
in an equivalent S16 neg either.

Or
so it would seem to me. Comments?

-Sam
Wells

film/nj/usa

Well,
all I can say is that now that I've seen the digital blow-up of "Conspiracy"
projected onto a large screen, the 2K resolution of the digitial intermediate
produced a sharper, finer-grained blow-up from S-16 to 35mm than any conventional
optical printer blow-up using dupes that I've seen from something
shot on 7274 before.

So
whether or not that digital intermediate captured all the information
on the Super-16 neg is sort of moot since conventional method of dupes
and optical printing do an even poorer job of capturing that info!

The
quality was similar to a DIRECT blow-up from Super-16 neg to 35mm print
-- if you can guarantee that all your 35mm prints will be made off of
the S-16 neg, then I suppose there's little reason for the expense
of a D.I. unless you need to use digital color-correction tools, or have
to integrate digital effects & electronic titles into the image.